From Wikipedia Sarah Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896 – September 6, 1986) was an American silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry. Sweet is renowned for her energetic, independent roles, at variance with the 'ideal' Griffith type of vulnerable, often fragile, femininity. After many starring roles, her first real landmark film was the 1911 Griffith thriller The Lonedale Operator. In 1913 she starred in Griffith's first feature-length movie, Judith of Bethulia. In 1914 Sweet was initially cast by Griffith in the part of Elsie Stoneman in his epic The Birth of a Nation but the role was eventually given to rival actress Lillian Gish, who was Sweet's senior by three years. That same year Sweet parted ways with Griffith and joined Paramount (then Famous Players-Lasky) for the much higher pay that studio was able to afford. Throughout the 1910s, Sweet continued her career appearing in a number of highly prominent roles in films and remained a publicly popular leading lady. She often starred in vehicles by Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan, and she was recognised by leading film critics of the time to be one of the foremost actresses of the entire silent era. It was during her time working with Neilan that the two began a publicized affair, which brought on his divorce from former actress Gertrude Bambrick. Sweet and Neilan married in 1922. The union ended in 1929 with Sweet charging that Neilan was a persistent adulterer. During the early 1920s Sweet's career continued to prosper, and she starred in the first film version of Anna Christie in 1923. The film is also notable as being the first Eugene O'Neill play to be made into a motion picture. In successive years, she starred in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Sporting Venus, both directed by Neilan. Sweet soon began a new career phase as one of the newly formed MGM studio's biggest stars. Sweet made just three talking pictures, including her critically lauded performance in 1930's Show Girl in Hollywood, before retiring from the screen that same year and marrying stage actor Raymond Hackett in 1935. The marriage lasted until Hackett's death in 1958. Sweet spent the remainder of her performing career in radio and in secondary Broadway stage roles. Eventually, her career in both of these fields petered out, and she began working in a Los Angeles department store. In the late 1960s, her acting legacy was resurrected when film scholars invited her to Europe to receive recognition for her work. On September 24, 1984, a tribute to Blanche Sweet was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Miss Sweet introduced her 1925 film, The Sporting Venus. Sweet died in New York City of a stroke, on September 6, 1986, just weeks after her 90th birthday.
Movie | Disclosure | Judith (archive footage) | 2020-06-19 |
Movie | Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter | Narrator (voice) | 1982-10-09 |
Series | Hollywood | Self | 1980-01-08 |
Movie | Twenty Years After | (archive footage) | 1944-01-01 |
Movie | The Woman Racket | Julia | 1930-01-24 |
Movie | Show Girl in Hollywood | Donny Harris | 1930-04-20 |
Movie | The Silver Horde | Queenie | 1930-10-24 |
Movie | Always Faithful | Mrs. George W. Mason | 1929-12-29 |
Movie | Fashion News | Self (1930) | 1928-11-06 |
Movie | Singed | Dolly Wall | 1927-08-23 |
Movie | Bluebeard's Seven Wives | Juliet | 1926-01-13 |
Movie | His Supreme Moment | Carla King | 1925-04-12 |
Movie | The Sporting Venus | Lady Gwendolyn | 1925-04-12 |
Movie | The New Commandment | Renee Darcourt | 1925-11-01 |
Movie | Why Women Love | Molla Hansen | 1925-10-18 |
Movie | Souls for Sale | Self - Celebrity Actress (uncredited) | 1923-04-22 |
Movie | Anna Christie | Anna Christie | 1923-11-24 |
Movie | Quincy Adams Sawyer | Alice Pettengill | 1922-12-04 |
Movie | That Girl Montana | Montana Rivers | 1921-01-31 |
Movie | The Deadlier Sex | Mary Willard | 1920-03-28 |
Movie | Girl in the Web | Esther Maitland | 1920-08-05 |
Movie | The Hushed Hour | Virginia Appleton Blodgett | 1919-05-18 |
Movie | A Woman of Pleasure | Alice Dane | 1919-11-09 |
Movie | The Evil Eye | Dr. Katherine Torrance | 1917-01-04 |
Movie | Those Without Sin | Melanie Landry | 1917-03-01 |
Movie | The Ragamuffin | Jenny | 1916-01-23 |
Movie | The Warrens of Virginia | Agatha Warren | 1915-02-14 |
Movie | The Captive | Sonya Matinovich | 1915-04-22 |
Movie | The Clue | Christine Lesley | 1915-07-08 |
Movie | The Secret Sin | Edith Martin / Grace Martin | 1915-10-21 |
Movie | Judith of Bethulia | Judith | 1914-03-08 |
Movie | Strongheart | Dorothy Nelson, Frank's Sister | 1914-03-08 |
Movie | Home, Sweet Home | The Wife | 1914-05-16 |
Movie | Classmates | Sylvia Randolph | 1914-02-14 |
Movie | The Avenging Conscience | The Sweetheart | 1914-08-02 |
Movie | The Odalisque | May, a Stock Girl | 1914-11-15 |
Movie | For Her Father's Sins | Mary Ashton | 1914-10-18 |
Movie | Three Friends | The Wife | 1913-01-02 |
Movie | Oil and Water | Mlle. Genova | 1913-02-10 |
Movie | A Chance Deception | The Wife | 1913-02-24 |
Movie | Broken Ways | The Road Agent's Wife | 1913-03-08 |
Movie | Two Men of the Desert | The Authoress | 1913-08-23 |
Movie | Love in an Apartment Hotel | The Young Woman | 1913-02-27 |
Movie | One Is Business, the Other Crime | Rich Wife | 1912-04-24 |
Movie | The Transformation of Mike | The Tenement Girl | 1912-02-01 |
Movie | The Eternal Mother | Martha, the Wife | 1912-01-10 |
Movie | The Lesser Evil | The Young Woman | 1912-04-29 |
Movie | For His Son | The Son's Fiancée | 1912-01-21 |
Movie | With the Enemy's Help | The Prospector's Wife | 1912-08-19 |
Movie | A Temporary Truce | Alice Hardy - the Prospector's Wife | 1912-06-10 |
Movie | The Massacre | Stephen's Ward | 1912-12-19 |
Movie | A Sailor’s Heart | The Sailor's Second Sweetheart | 1912-11-25 |
Movie | The Painted Lady | The Older Sister | 1912-10-24 |
Movie | The Primal Call | 1911-06-21 | |
Movie | Fighting Blood | 1911-06-28 | |
Movie | Enoch Arden | Woman on the Beach | 1911-06-15 |
Movie | His Daughter | 1911-02-23 | |
Movie | A Country Cupid | Edith | 1911-07-23 |
Movie | The Lonedale Operator | Daughter of the Lonedale Operator | 1911-03-23 |
Movie | Enoch Arden: Part I | 1911-06-12 | |
Movie | A Woman Scorned | 1911-11-30 | |
Movie | Through Darkening Vales | Grace | 1911-11-16 |
Movie | The Last Drop of Water | Mary | 1911-07-26 |
Movie | The Battle | The Boy's Sweetheart | 1911-11-06 |
Movie | The Miser's Heart | Neighbor | 1911-11-20 |
Movie | The Villain Foiled | Miss Page | 1911-08-30 |
Movie | The Making of a Man | Young Woman | 1911-10-04 |
Movie | The Long Road | Edith | 1911-10-26 |
Movie | The Rocky Road | 1910-01-03 | |
Movie | All on Account of the Milk | The Maid | 1910-01-13 |
Movie | A Flash of Light | 1910-07-17 | |
Movie | A Corner in Wheat | 1909-12-13 | |
Movie | The Day After | The New Year | 1909-12-30 |
Movie | To Save Her Soul | Stage Dancer | 1909-12-27 |